


Addict & Convict

by TurtleTotem



Series: Tumblr Ficlets [16]
Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Charles in a Wheelchair, Drug Addiction, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 13:57:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10968648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TurtleTotem/pseuds/TurtleTotem
Summary: Ten years ago, Charles Xavier went to the bank at exactly the wrong time, and recognized the people robbing it as his boyfriend and sister. The day ended with Erik in jail, Raven on the run, and Charles bleeding out in an ambulance.Ten years later, Charles is still in a wheelchair, has lost his teaching position, and is developing an ever-deeper dependence on prescription painkillers that worries even his dealer (and only remaining friend), Hank.And then Erik shows up in his kitchen, broken handcuffs hidden under his sleeves, and says “Good to see you, old friend.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know that I will ever finish this -- doubt it, at this point -- but I still enjoy what exists of this 'verse, so, enjoy. Found on tumblr [here](http://turtletotem.tumblr.com/post/108621848426/addict-convict-au) and [here](http://turtletotem.tumblr.com/post/113612203591/addict-convict-au-part-2%22).

Charles knew he could doom Erik with a word. He knew the prosecutor had to suspect the truth; all he had to do was let her worm it out of him, there on the witness stand, and Erik might be behind bars for the rest of his life. All Charles had to do was admit that he had recognized the man who put a bullet in his spine. All the other evidence against Erik could, with effort, be explained away, but an eyewitness, Erik’s own boyfriend… that would be the death knell of Erik’s defense.

“Did you recognize any of the bank robbers, Professor Xavier?” the prosecutor asked, and Charles drew in a breath.

He had not looked at Erik while he testified, not once. Not once while the prosecutor dragged him, for the hundred thousandth time, through every detail of that day at the bank – dropping his deposit slip when men in black masks burst in firing guns at the ceiling, his attempts to talk them down, tackling his friend the off-duty cop (Moira had already given her testimony) when the lead robber shot at her. He managed to say it all, back aching more every second, without seeing more of Erik than his hands splayed out on the shining wooden table, hands that had fiddled ceaselessly with coins and paperclips throughout the rest of the trial but were now perfectly still.

Now, entirely without permission, Charles’s eyes flicked to Erik’s face. He had no idea what to expect there – rage? pleading? blank restraint? – but what he saw was…

Almost the same look he’d seen only a year before, when Erik took him by the shoulders the morning he defended his thesis and told him, _You can do this. You’re brilliant and you can do this._ That look, now under a layer of resignation and wistfulness and breathless pain. A look that said, _It’s all right. Just say it. You can do it. I know you can._

Charles looked away, frantically adjusting his collar with trembling fingers, as if a too-tight tie were the reason he couldn’t breathe.

“Professor Xavier?”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t recognize any of them.”

*

They found Erik guilty anyway. Armed robbery of seven banks and attempted murder. Twenty-five years.

Charles went home to an empty house and downed two bottles of whiskey with double his usual dose of oxycontin. He fumbled the transfer from wheelchair to bed and spent the night on the floor because he hurt too much and was too tired and drunk and angry to try again. The last thing he did before passing out was throw Erik’s picture across the room to shatter against the wall.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ten years later.

For once, it was still morning when Charles woke, if barely. It was so strange to see his bedroom with morning-angled sunlight streaming through the curtains that for a moment he was disoriented, unsure if this was really his room at all.

No, it was his. There was his alarm clock, still blinking after the power outage… last week? Next to it, Raven’s postcard from almost three months ago—some beach scene with "MISS YOU, R" in her handwriting. That was all he’d had from Raven in years, postcards. A light was blinking on his phone, on top of the postcard; he squinted through layers of various-chemical hangovers and fumbled at it, finally succeeded in reading the screen.

One missed call from Moira MacTaggert. Followed up by a text consisting of the words _Call me._

Charles frowned in uneasy confusion. He hadn’t heard from Moira in years. Once upon a time he’d thought maybe… but after a grand total of one kiss, she’d seemed to forget he existed. Or maybe _he’d_ simply forgotten he existed.

Oh, it was far too early for philosophy. Charles left the phone behind, hissing and grunting with various discomforts as he transferred to his chair and made his way to the bathroom. Ah, the morning routine, time-consuming and thoroughly horrible as ever, but at least familiar enough now that he could do it without fully opening his eyes.

He heard movement in the kitchen as he left the bathroom. Ah, Hank. He’d insisted on Charles giving him a key after the second time Charles was too drunk to open the door, and since then he came and went as he pleased. Since Hank was probably the only reason Charles was still alive, he didn’t mind it.

 _I hope he’s brought more pills,_ Charles thought, pushing the chair a little faster down the hallway. He was almost down to his actual prescription amount.

He rounded the corner into the kitchen, and stopped dead.

The man standing at his stove, having apparently unearthed its surface from the sliding piles of dishes and found last week’s handful of groceries, was making pancakes. He was wearing grey sweats with too-long sleeves and humming a tune Charles didn’t quite recognize. And he definitely was not Hank McCoy.

He turned toward Charles and smiled, casual and cheerful as you please, and said, “Good to see you, old friend.”

“No,” Charles said. “What—what am I on, today? What did I take that made this—made you—no, see, it can’t be you because you’re in prison, they gave you twenty-five years in prison—”

That’s when he saw the broken handcuffs peeking out from beneath Erik’s too-long sleeves, and everything became magnificently, terribly clear.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Addict & Convict (The Pancakes and Postcards Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11305737) by [bocje_ce_ustu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bocje_ce_ustu/pseuds/bocje_ce_ustu)




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